2023-04-28 12:39:00
The cows only gave sour milk and the chickens stopped laying eggs when the train passed. Moreover, the high speeds for train passengers would not be healthy at all. Although the first passenger trains between Amsterdam and Haarlem ran at a maximum speed of 40 km/h in 1839, many thought this was much too fast. Not everyone welcomed the noisy machines steaming through the landscape. There were all kinds of ghost stories about the first trains that started running all over Europe in the mid-nineteenth century.
Inauguration of d’Eenhundred Roe station near Amsterdam on Friday, September 19, 1839. The country’s first train ran here.
Despite initial reservations, the train was a success. There was a lot of enthusiasm for rail travel, and a number of successful private and state-built connections were established in the Netherlands. These would grow into a national rail network, which would become the driver of industrialization throughout the country. Around 1900, the train was the main mode of transport in the country.
Resistance to new technology is of all times. In the nineteenth century, the Luddites in England were already destroying looms for fear of losing work, experts have been warning for years about the large number of jobs that are at risk due to the arrival of robots and recently there was a call from tech celebrities to pause the development of artificial intelligence.
Why are we afraid of innovations that will eventually find their way into society? Are we doomed to be overtaken by time for eternity?
Every generation feels special
The resistance to the train above now sounds quite absurd, but it is easy to explain, according to Erik van der Vleuten, professor of technology history at Eindhoven University of Technology. “Until then people had a strong relationship with their local environment, they knew every pothole and every bump in the landscape, so to speak. That ‘connection’ with the underground quickly disappeared when trains started running. The local experience was exchanged for that of a traveler through the countryside. In addition, space and time were in a sense somewhat lost because distant places were suddenly connected to each other.”
The feeling of unease does not disappear when the train becomes established. The transportation revolution rumbles on at the beginning of the twentieth century. Cars roll off the assembly line, zeppelins begin to fly, intercontinental boat traffic increases and aviation pioneers make ever-longer flights. In addition, there are telephones in more and more places and science is developing rapidly. It is an exciting, dynamic but also uncertain and alienating time.
Nikola Tesla conducts experiments with electricity in his laboratory in 1899.
In fact, technological and scientific progress just rolls on without you as an individual seeming to have any real influence on it. This means that almost every generation feels that it is experiencing many changes. “In recent history, people continuously experience that their time is faster, more modern and more advanced than the previous period,” says Van der Vleuten. “You feel like you live in a unique era. It’s always about different technologies, but if you look at the sentiments you see a lot of similarities. For example, warnings that not everyone benefits from such a new invention. That’s quite surprising. People in the nineteenth century already experienced what we are experiencing with artificial intelligence, for example, by train.”
The sentiments are mixed in nature. In addition to being skeptical, people are often immensely enthusiastic. In the late 1990s, the emergence of the Internet led to an excessive valuation of all companies that did ‘something’ with the Internet (and, by the way, afterwards a huge stock market crash). With the rise of mass media such as radio and TV in the twentieth century, enthusiasts suspected it had the potential to eradicate war worldwide. No one would dream of starting an armed conflict with the world watching. Skeptics saw in the mass media a powerful tool for dictators to influence their people.
Repeating repertoire
More recently, the emergence of artificial intelligence, which now produces fluent and seemingly coherent texts on command and makes great pictures. It is one of the last waves of digitization and automation. The internet, computers, phones, it internet of things is a colorful collection of developments that radically change the way information is processed. As early as the 1980s, reports warned of high unemployment due to automation. And in the 1990s, experts pointed to the emergence of a possible dichotomy in society, says Van der Vleuten. “It was about who did and who didn’t have access to this technology. Those who do not have that are at a disadvantage, or can no longer even participate in society,” he says. “That discussion never went away. The paradox is that everyone now has the internet, and yet there is a lot of inequality based on digital skills.” As examples, he mentions that it is becoming increasingly difficult to pay in cash, that current train information can only be found ‘in the app’ and that it is more expensive to book a flight ticket if you do not know how to do it digitally.
Concerns about a technological dichotomy haves in have nots already played a role in the construction of the first railways, for example. Villages on a railway benefited from it, it brought industriousness and attracted people. A neighboring village without a station remained less accessible. “Exactly the same thing happened with the introduction of electricity and telephone. Again and again, some people got the feeling of being a kind of second-class citizen because they didn’t have access to a certain technology,” says Van der Vleuten.
Conservative by nature?
Is the resistance to new technology ingrained conservatism of people who prefer to keep everything the same? According to Jeroen van Dongen, it is more nuanced. He is professor of history of science at the University of Amsterdam. There can be many different reasons to oppose a certain technology. “People can point to inhumane aspects of innovation, such as government use of algorithms that can lead to discrimination,” he says. “It can stem from social criticism, for example on the way technology is organised. Much of the internet infrastructure is in the hands of a handful of powerful American companies. But why shouldn’t Amazon be a utility company?”
technology toe-own
You may suspect that it is mainly the elderly who no longer keep up with the times and look down on the younger generation that does use the new technology. But it is more nuanced. Some elderly people manage perfectly well to keep up with the times – think of the busy internet and video calling 93-year-old Cees who interviewed NEMO Kennislink in 2021. Other people have difficulty with change at a young age.
A telephone exchange where calls were forwarded manually.
The appropriation of technology only becomes interesting for innovation science, says Van der Vleuten. Many innovations are used slightly differently than the creator intended, if the inventor had an idea at all. Van der Vleuten mentions campaigns at the beginning of the 20th century to discourage people from chatting on the phone. The brand new telephone network became overloaded with all that chatting people. Initially, the car was not a means of transport for the whole family. It was mainly seen as an ‘adventure machine’ with which you escape the city. And if the device broke down on the way, then it was the charm that you got the thing working again on the spot.
Appropriation of technology is important for all groups in society, says Van der Vleuten. “The groups that are usually not at the forefront of using new technology, such as the elderly and people with a migrant background, should also be able to benefit from it. If too many people fail to do so, resistance to such a technology will grow.”
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Obsessed with the new
Let’s turn the question around: does it ever not go fast? Is there always a group of people who can’t keep up? It’s all a matter of perspective. For example, Van der Vleuten mentions sketches of the future from the 1930s, science fiction that is full of flying cars and people who shoot from planet to planet with rockets. It turned out not to be going so smoothly, because we still drive – just like then – on four wheels, and people have not yet been further than the moon. The Internet as a ‘modern’ vital infrastructure rests on technological foundations from the 1960s. You can say that it is actually quite slow.
“Look around you and you mainly see old technology,” says Van der Vleuten. “There are cars, trains, telephones and the internet. We live in houses that are tens or even hundreds of years old. And that while the debate is always about the new. In that sense, we are obsessed with everything new.”
#fast #isnt